Editor Utility Widgets don't seem to properly update instances. Is this a bug?

Im using an editor utility widget to customize NPCs in my game and it has a child EWIDG that allows me to change the color on the NPCs. While trying to get function and event calls to work from the child to the parent, I noticed that my print string was reporting a different instance of the parent than the debug filter on the parent was showing. At first I didnt think my function calls were working but later I noticed that they were indeed working, but they were going to the wrong instance. If I updated the parent the instance would roll over to _508 for example but if I ran the editor and the child was making the print screen is was sending the call to _507. The work around was to compile the parent and then compile the child and then I could see everything running as it should.